A Tennessee man flying his small plane into a Kentucky airport made a perfect approach – except that he had forgotten to lower his landing gear.

Thomas Lepsch, 50, skidded a few hundred feet before safely stopping at Middlesboro/Bell County Airport.

“It was pilot error,” Lepsch admitted.

Gee, you think?

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Forget the dove of peace.

The common barn owl is helping to bring together some Israelis and Jordanian farmers, as both groups use the bird to kill off produce-eating rats.

“We’re doing something our governments are not able to do,” says Mira Edelstein, of Friends of the Earth-Middle East. “If people know how to highlight the environmental benefits that can come out of this type of cooperation, then it’s not political anymore.”

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More than 3,500 people swam the Pearl River in Guangzhou, China, yesterday to promote awareness of the city’s aggressive cleanup of the polluted waterway.

One swimmer, unfortunately, became more aware of the pollution itself.

A weird-looking creature that fishermen caught off the island of Zanzibar has been identified as a coelacanth, an ancient fish whose ancestors first swam in the planet’s oceans more than 360 million years ago.

Nariman Jidawi, of Zanzibar’s Institute of Marine Science, said this coelacanth – one of a species that was thought extinct until one was caught off South Africa in 1938 – weighed 60 pounds and measured more than 4 feet.

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A Turkish punk band will be tried for defamation for making fun of an SAT-like exam.

The five members of Deli – which translates into Crazy – can face up to 18 months in jail each for singing such lyrics as, “I have gotten lost/You have ruined my future/I am going to tell you one thing/Shove that exam.”

Catchy, eh?

The men, their manager and a former band member will go on trial Thursday in Ankara.